Spanish house prices continue to slide, as the economy slumps deeper into recession mainly due to weak demand and stringent austerity measures.

In June 2012, Tinsa’s IMIE general house price index plunged by 10.8% from the same period last year. House prices in Spain have fallen by about 30.4% from the peak levels seen in December 2007. By region:

Capitals and Major Cities recorded the sharpest drop of 13.5% year-on-year in June 2012

On the Mediterranean Coast, house prices plunged 13.3% over the same period

In Metropolitan Areas, house prices fell by 11.6% year-on-year in June 2012

In the Balearic and Canary Islands, house prices dropped 6.8% year-on-year in June 2012

In Other Municipalities, house prices fell by 7.3% year-on-year

This is in line with the data released by the country’s Ministry of Public Works, which showed that property prices in the country fell by 8.3% year-on-year in Q2 2012.

In Q2 2012, the average house price was €1,606.4 (US$1,967.5) per square metre (sq. m.).

Land prices are also falling. The average land price in Spain dropped 16.4% to €177.6 per sq. m. year-on-year in Q1 2012. The highest land price was registered in Madrid at €377.5 per sq. m., followed by Pais Vasco (€277.2 per sq. m.). The cheapest land was in Castile and Leon, at €73.3 per sq. m..

Property demand is currently very weak, as consumer and investor confidence fell amidst the struggling economy. The total number of properties sold dropped 29% to 349,118 units in 2011 from the previous year. In the first quarter of 2012, the total number of property sales was 70,228, according to the Ministry of Public Works. Of these about 91.2% were in the free maret housing sector and the remaining 8.8% were subsidized housing.

Likewise, the total number of land transactions dropped 19.2% to 3,598 in the first quarter of 2012 from the same period last year. Over the same period, the total area of land transactions plunged by 15.2% to 4.63 million sq. m. while the total value fell by 32.9% to €582.86 million.

Spanish banks have been giving very generous discounts just to sell their toxic property assets.

Santander, Spain’s largest bank, has reportedly dropped its property prices by around 35% to 45%.

BBVA, Spain’s second biggest bank, which has €8.7 billion of real properties on its books, is ready to drop prices as necessary to speed up sales.

The Sabadell Bank has recently been selling off new properties at a 38% discount.

The average amount of mortgage contracts in the country fell from about €151,000 during the peak levels of late 2007 to slightly above €105,000 in the first quarter of 2012, according to the valuers Tinsa.

Spanish house prices are expected to fall by another 10% before reaching bottom, according to local property market experts.

Transaction costs on second-hand properties are moderate in Spain and there are no restrictions on foreigners buying property in the country.

In 2011, the Spanish economy recorded a meagre GDP growth of 0.7%, after experiencing annual declines of 3.7% in 2009 and 0.07% in 2010, according to the IMF. The economy is expected to shrink by 1.5% in 2012 and by another 0.5% in 2013, according to the Spanish government.

Unreliable house prices?

Many doubt the central bank’s house price statistics, which are, allegedly, too optimistic. A major pitfall of the BOS’s house price figures is that they are based on official valuations, not on actual sales or contract prices.

"The problem with the government´s data is it tends to understate price falls, which have been more like 30 per cent or more (peak-to-present) in coastal regions like the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol," said Mark Stucklin of Spanish Property Insight.

In 2008 the Minister of Housing, Beatriz Corredor, embarrassed the government by contradicting the official figures published by her own department, in a TV interview.

From boom to gloom

For what it is worth, the official house price indices do track the enormous house price boom Spain from 1996 to 2007. Spain’s national average house price rose by 197% (117% in real terms), one of Europe’s highest house price increases.

Madrid and Barcelona aside, house prices are highest on the Mediterranean: in Catalona, Andalucia and Valencia. The price of coastal properties surged 250% (155% in real terms) from 1996 to 2007, on average, as hundreds of thousands of foreigners, mainly from the UK, France and Germany, bought property.

On the other hand, the average price of properties in Spain’s two main cities, Madrid and Barcelona, rose 188% from 1996 to 2007, while prices in other inner provinces rose by 175% (101%).

The massive housing boom ended abruptly in 2008, as the global crisis hit and credit dried up. The housing slump has battered the Spanish economy, and brought spiralling unemployment. Developers were left with blocks of unsold properties and massive debts. Uncertainty engulfed the market.

By end-2010, house prices have already fallen by about 17% from the 2007 peak, according to the Bank of Spain figures.

Property transactions rising!

Property transactions increased in 2010 by 5.9%, to 491,061, after three years of sharp declines, according to the Spanish Housing Ministry.

Confidence is beginning to return. But transactions are well below the 950,000 seen at the peak, in 2006.

There were a total of 29,615 property transactions by foreigners in 2010, up 21% from 2009, but down 21% from the 37,714 transactions in 2008.

The global financial meltdown brought drastic decline. There were just 328,600 dwelling units started in 2008, dropping to 159,300 units in 2009. By year-end September 2010, there were about 91,500 dwelling starts in Spain.

Dwelling completions followed a similar path. Despite the massive oversupply, dwelling completions exceeded 630,000 in 2008, most units having been started before the crisis. In 2009, dwelling completions dropped to 424,000.

The number of unsold properties in Spain reached 1 million or 20% of the total housing stock in 2009, according to The Ministry of Housing. Real estate experts believe that another 6 years is needed to clear the unsold properties backlog.

Interest rates stabilize

The great Spanish housing boom was fuelled by 15 years of dramatic reductions in mortgage interest rates, from 17% in 1991, to 10%–12% (1995 to 1996), to below 3.5% (2004 – 2005) - among the lowest rates in Europe.

Post-crisis, the average mortgage interest rate in Spain has stabilized at between 2.3% and 3.0% since the second half of 2009, after the European Central Bank (ECB) cut rates in response to the financial crisis to a historic low of 1% in May 2009, where they have remained.

In January 2011, average Spanish mortgage rate rose slightly to 2.88%, from 2.52% during the same period last year, according to the Bank of Spain.

Spain’s housing market is extremely vulnerable to interest rate changes, due to the use of adjustable rate mortgages. More than 80% of new mortgages have had initial rate fixations (IRF) of less than 1 year since 2004 (more than 90% of new loans from 2005 to 2006). In 2010, about 86% of new mortgage loans had an IRF of less than a year.

The fact that, despite record low interest rates, there has been so little mortgage uptake, reveals the weakness of housing demand.

Problematic loans hit the banking sector

Spanish banks are now Spain’s largest property owners. Spain’s banks hold more than €100 billion of problematic loans, plus a large portfolio of repossessed properties whose value has continuously plummeted.

About €20 billion is required to rebuild the banking sector, according to the government. Moody’s believes a far higher amount - €50 billion - is needed. In January 2011, bad loans rose to 6.1% of the banks’ loan portfolio, the highest ratio since October 1995, according to Bank of Spain figures. Record unemployment is leading to rising defaults.

Stagnant mortgage market

As a proportion to GDP, the Spanish mortgage market has grown from 17% of GDP in 1995, to 29% in 2000, and 62.5% by end-2010. In 2010, total outstanding mortgage loans grew just 1% from the previous year, after stagnating in (- 0.02% change) in 2009. The mortgage market grew by more than 20% annually from 2003 to 2006; although growth slowed to 13% in 2007 and 4% in 2008.

Generous tax breaks for mortgage interest payments and capital repayments helped fuel mortgage growth. Income tax deductions reduce effective interest rates on Spanish mortgages by 2 percentage points, according to an OECD study, and real after-tax interest rates have been negative since 1999 (the study was published in 2004).

The subsidies effectively allowed homebuyers to increase their total borrowings by 15% to 20%. Housing savings schemes were also given tax breaks. Imputed rent for owner-occupied houses, and capital gains on the sale of the primary residence, are also tax-exempt.

Very low rental yields

Rent controls cripple Spain’s rented sector. Only 10% (8% in the private rented sector) of all housing units remained in the rented sector in 2004, down from 20.8% in 1981. New tenancies were partially liberalized in 1985, but leases must run for a minimum of five years, and it is difficult in law to recoup unpaid rents.

However arguably an even bigger problem for landlords is that gross rental yields are very low - gross returns on renting for Spain as a whole fell from 3.8% in 1Q-1998, to 1.1% in Q4-2010, according to the Bank of Spain. Landlords are often better off keeping their units unoccupied, because rental income is typically insufficient to compensate for the wear and tear of letting.

In 2001, 14% of the total housing stock was vacant, bigger than the entire rental stock.

Gross rental yields in Madrid are extremely low at around 3.8% on the very smallest apartments (50 square metres), according to a Global Property Guide research conducted in July 2010. Larger apartments yield substantially less, at around 2.6% on apartments of 200 sq. m.
In Barcelona, gross rental yields are slightly higher at 4% (the return on 60 sq. m. apartments). However, this remains low by international standards.

Battered economy

Spain’s economy grew by 3.8% annually from 1997 to 2007, fuelled by the property boom, supported by cheap mortgage credit and the surge in residential construction. At the height of the housing boom, total investment in housing was 7.5% of GDP in 2007, significantly above the OECD average.

The economy plunged into recession in late 2008 when the real estate bubble burst. It managed to escape an 18-month long recession in early-2010, but has failed to record any significant growth since then. In 2011, the economy recorded a meager growth of 0.7%, after experiencing annual declines of 3.7% in 2009 and 0.07% in 2010, according to the IMF.

The Spanish economy is now officially in recession again. In the second quarter of 2012, the economy contracted 0.4% from the previous quarter, after registering quarterly declines of 0.3% in both Q1 2012 and Q4 2011, based on figures released by the country’s National Statistics Institute.

In an annual basis, the economy contracted by 1% in Q2 2012 from the same period last year, mainly due to a slump in domestic demand. The economy is expected to shrink by 1.5% in 2012 and by another 0.5% in 2013, according to the Spanish government.

Investors are now leaving the country. From January to May 2012, about €163 billion (which is equivalent to around 16% of GDP) left the country, as the government’s rescue of one of its biggest banks (Bankia) hit the already fragile investor confidence in the country.

The construction industry is a key employer of low-skilled workers in the country. The increase in construction activity in the past helped pull unemployment down to 8.3% in 2007 from 24% in 1994. With the situation now reversed, the unemployment rate now skyrocketed nearly 25%, among the highest levels in the OECD.

Since the 1980s, the Spanish government annually runs a deficit. It only broke into surplus in 2005, 2006 and 2007, with the biggest surplus of 2.7% of GDP. However, the global recession pushed the economy into deficit once more; at 3.8% of GDP in 2008. Spain’s deficit rose to 9.24% of GDP in 2010, then fell slightly to 8.9% of GDP in 2011 but still way beyond the EU limit of 3% of GDP.